


Scars

by Faetality



Series: Happy That Way [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Human, Character Death, Child Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fire, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Past Death of a child, Past Violence, Scarred Peter Hale, Single Parent Stiles Stilinski, You've been warned, but not really, not a happy fic, this is not a happy installment, un'edited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 11:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17324024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faetality/pseuds/Faetality
Summary: Stiles learns about Peter's scars.





	Scars

Stiles found Peter sitting in the shower when he came home for lunch. If that wasn’t an alarm Stiles didn’t know what was. Shower aside to find the man home in the day was enough to shoot concern through him. Zena was at a birthday party for the day and possibly the night if she decided to stay for the sleepover portion yet he still closed the bathroom door softly behind him. The curtain was drawn and he was careful when he pulled it aside to reveal his lover.    
  
Peter was stock still beneath the water. No shaking shoulders, no sobs or gasps, nothing at all and that probably scared him more than anything. “Peter?” No reply. “Baby?” He crouches and reaches out to touch his back under the spray. He jerks his hand back with a noise caught in his throat. The water was scalding hot and he couldn’t tell how long it had been going but Peter’s back was a dark pink that suggested far too long. He turns it down but not off and tries again, resting his palm in the center. “Peter, what’s wrong?” The man startled under his touch but his head stayed bowed. If anything he curled tighter.    
  
Stiles stood and stripped his shirt and pants away, the shirt half soaked already by the back spray. In briefs, he sits back down on the side with his legs in the tub. “You don’t have to talk to me but you need to give me a sign what to do, baby.” He runs a steady hand down the man’s spine. “Please.” Stiles didn’t want to let his desperation come through and he can only hope that he’s successful.    
His hand brushes a gnarled scar on his back and Peter chokes out- “don’t. Don’t touch them-”    
His hand immediately moves away from the scars and he rubs Peter’s neck with gentle movements. “Okay.” They sit like that for a while up until the water began to cool. Peter’s head raises and he uncurls a little. Eyes still ahead but it’s progress and Stiles makes a suggestion, “Let's go to bed.”   
  
“It’s like 4-“ His voice sounded like cracked glass, fragile and jagged.    
“It won’t hurt a thing.” He towels himself off and then passes the towel to Peter, grabbing a second to run over the man’s hair for him. Not because he needed the help but because Stiles needed him to know he was cared for. Once it was mostly dry Stiles pulled away and guided him to their room. Boxers were all they got into, Peter crawling under the covers without quite meeting his eyes and then curling into a ball near the edge. Stiles pressed up behind him, leaving a little space between in case Peter was still not welcoming touch. Tension eases out slowly and Stiles dares to wrap his arms around the man. Waits for something - For anything- to shift.    
  
“It was a fire.” His palm rubs soothingly again Peter’s chest like he could relieve the ache that came with hard memories. “It’s a long story.”   
  
“You don’t have to tell me.”    
“I want to.” The silence drags out while he gathers his words and Stiles doesn’t dare break it.    
  
“You know my nephew Derek... when he was in high school his mother was handling a case against the Argent family. Big scandal, the kind that ruins lives and kills empires.” Stiles pulls another blanket up from the end of the bed to provide an extra layer of shelter around them. Peter closes his eyes as he continues, breathing going deceptively steady.   
  
-   
He remembered very clearly the evening Derek knocked on his office door and slipped into his office like he had done something wrong. Barely sixteen years old he had a look in his eyes that hurt to see in someone so young. Fear and pain and panic underlying a hatred that should never have existed. He’d shut the door behind him and before Peter said a word he was speaking with fast words that were more air that substance. “I think I did something bad. Peter-“    
He’d had a couch in the study at that time. A butter soft leather thing that had seen its fair share of secrets through the years and not one round of tears. He pushed Derek down onto it, sitting at his side and rubbing his back as the boy fought with the weight in his chest. “It’s okay Derek. Just talk to me. Whatever you say I’m not going to be mad. I swear it.”    
“You can’t tell mom.” And he’s so desperate that Peter almost agreed. Almost.    
“I can’t promise you that.”    
  
He spoke in hushed tones, every third word a hiccup. He told him about Kate Argent. How he’d been ‘dating her’ in his own words. How he didn’t know at first. That it was nice to talk to her and that’s all he did but then... he remembered the rage that burned through him. He would have killed her with his bare hands in that moment without a singular care for any repercussion. But she wasn’t there. And Derek wasn’t done. So he held Derek and rocked him like a child until he stopped crying.    
  
“We have to tell your mom.”    
“No, please- Peter.”    
“Derek, I know. Trust me, I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.” Not anymore. “But she needs to know.”    
  
They never did tell Talia the whole of it. By the time they got to the house there were police and scorch marks climbing the outer walls. An attempted arson. They didn’t have enough evidence without them but between Peter and Talia, who had been in the house when the glass had shattered below her bedroom window, and Derek the story got pieces together but Kate was in the wind before the first sirens had filled the air. Derek had slept in the home office for a week before Talia had made him move back to his room.    
  
The black cloud didn’t leave them for three more weeks. Derek had started to claw back a semblance of normalcy, at least on the surface. Peter, James, all of the adults stayed close to the house in case she came back. Their family was close. They looked out for each other. No one was going to touch their home.    
  
It was a Wednesday that Peter piled the kids in the car for school, Derek and Cora, little Andrew and baby Emma- Amalie’s little girl. Cora and Andrew were dropped out at the doors of Beacon Hills elementary and middle schools without a single issue. It was the high school where Peter parked and stepped from the car to stand and watch Derek get to the doors. A deputy stood across the lot near the school, a precaution the Hales were forever grateful for. “You know to call if you need me.” Derek had nodded with a smile and jogged off.    
  
The sound of shattering glass was all the warning he had. Heat flared at his side, a flash of bright lights. A scream. To say it happened fast would be a lie. It felt like time froze. He watched the flames light up the car, the accelerant that splashed on his jeans soaking him in cold before it too caught flame. Seeing the horror on Derek’s face as the teen turned back and the glee on that bitch’s where see stood between two cars.    
  
He remembered scrabbling for the door to the back, wrenching it open and heat searing through his flesh. He remembered screaming as people pulled him away and crying but the tears were dry before they fell. He didn’t know if it was him or everyone around him that were dying.    
  
He spent four days in ICU before they told him they couldn’t get her out. He spent almost two months in the hospital before he was able to leave. He could hardly stand when James helped him up the steps of the Hale House. He remembered vividly the way Derek couldn’t look at him. The way Amalie cried every time she saw him for three weeks and cried more when she didn’t. The scars were the least of his pains then.    
  
Derek had fallen asleep by his bed one evening and it had taken hours of quiet conversation before it seemed like maybe, just maybe, he could be okay. In the daylight it didn’t feel like any of them would be.    
  
-   
Stiles had his face pressed against Peter’s back. He didn’t say a word. He just held on and pressed his lips against the skin he found. He couldn’t imagine the pain. The horror of watching... well. Watching someone he loved die. Of how long Peter must have worked to repair what was between him and Derek and what it took to heal the scars.  To heal anything.    
  
“I just wanted you to know. I don’t want pity.”    
“I know. I love you. Thank you.”  He knew they still hurt at times. There had been more than one day he had rubbed cream into his skin and laid out pills for the pains. But they didn’t talk about it. They hadn’t needed too.    
  
  
After a while Peter shifted enough to be released and to turn around, burying himself back against Stiles with his own arms around the man’s body and face pressed into his neck. The blankets rose above them like a fortress and for a little while they laid still. Stiles stroking the man’s hair until he thought he may be asleep. No words needed to be said. No stories to be told. Peter grieved. Stiles held. They both loved.

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to get this up now but I may come back and edit it and clean it up later.  
> I appreciate all of y'all and your viewership means a lot to me!


End file.
